The Best Black Friday Deals for Your Mac

Turkey Day 2013 is over, and now it’s time for the biggest savings of the year: Black Friday and its close cousin Cyber Monday. And, as usual, there’s more than enough incredible deals to go around. There’s Apple Store gift cards if you buy a new Mac, steep discounts on App Store apps, and much more. Best of all, the majority of them are open to anyone, anywhere — even if you’re not in the US, there’s plenty of Black Friday offers for everyone!

Here’s the very best deals for apps and gadgets we love and recommend — but hurry, most of the deals are only for today or this weekend!

Hardware Deals

The very best deal today is Apple’s Black Friday sale — which is available today only — which is offering a $150 Apple Store gift card with the purchase of any new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or iMac directly from the Apple Store. That makes a new 11″ Air essentially only cost $849, an especially good deal if you’ve been needing a new laptop with insanely great battery life. There’s also a similar offer for the iPad, with a $75 Apple Store card with any new iPad Air. Do note, though: that’s an Apple Store gift card, not an App Store gift card — you can pick up an iPod, Apple TV, or perhaps a new case with that extra money, but you won’t be able to stock up on apps with it.

And, of course, you may find better deals in local stores — the older iPad Mini and iPad 2 are both seeing quite good deals in many brick-and-mortar stores. Those deals aren’t in every country’s Apple Store, but you’re likely to find a variation of that sale in your local Apple store in most countries.

Then, for some other great hardware deals:

Doxie, the scanner company, is offering $50 off their Doxie One (which makes it just $109) and a free case with a new Doxie Flip. That’d make a great gift for yourself or anyone else going paperless next year.

Google Chromecast is just $29.99 on Amazon, and it comes with $6 of free Google Play credit. The Chromecast isn’t perfect, as we found in our review, but it’s a pretty nice — and very cheap — way to make any TV a little smarter.

The amazing folks at The Wirecutter have rounded up the deals on their favorite hardware products this year, and you’ll find deals there on everything from a Samsung TV to a number of headphones and camera lenses

I know, I know: it’s Mac.AppStorm here. But if Windows 8.1 has your interest too, or you just want a super-cheap tablet for web browsing and Office, Microsoft has the original Surface on sale for just $199. That’s rather crazily cheap.

App Deals

Software is our forté at AppStorm, and there’s even better deals to be found in the world of apps than you could ever hope for in the world of hardware. Honestly, there’s so many deals, if you’ve been eying an app on the App Store you might as well go check and see if it’s on sale today — it really might be. There’s too much to cover every discounted app, so here’s the best apps on sale of the stuff we really recommend. Seriously: every app listed here is apps our team uses and loves, and we’re certain you’ll love them too. (Note: app names are all in bold and link directly to their purchase page, while the links in the descriptions go to our reviews of the respective apps)

Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom CC are just $9.99/monthforever if you signup before December 2nd, 2013. If you’ve held out on Creative Cloud but actually use Photoshop, now’s the time to subscribe. That’s really a good deal, and 50% less than Photoshop CC’s individual app subscription on its own usually costs.

Macphun has an incredible Black Friday deal running, with 20% off each of their Pro apps (Snapheal Pro, Intensify Pro, and their Creative Kit) plus a free 8GB SD card with each purchase. Their App Store apps — Snapheal, Intensify, FX Photo Studio Pro, and ColorStrokes — are all 40% off as well.

Paddle has three bundles: the Mac Freebie Bundle includes Numi, Deal Alert, MacBlu-ray Player and more for the low price of free, the Paddle HolidayBundle with Dropzone, Throng, iResizer, Moneybag and more for $39.99, and theProductive Macs Bundle with Dayspring, X-Mirage, The Archive Browser, and more for any price you want!

Ondesoft is giving away its screen capture app this weekend, and offering 50% off its X-Mirage app

If you’re building a new WordPress site, WooThemes is offering 35% off all their themes with the coupon code blackfriday2013

Keynotetopia, the set of Keynote and PowerPoint templates for prototyping apps and more, is 50% off.

There’s more!

That’s far from all of the Black Friday goodness you’ll find out there. There’s tons more discounted apps and hardware — this is just the best stuff that we really recommend and think you’ll definitely want to buy. So why wait? Head to the App Store, pick up some discounted apps — or go get a new Mac from the Apple Store — and then leave a comment below letting us know if there’s more amazing Black Friday deals we should know about!